PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News
Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.
When NVIDIA first resurrected the term "SLI" from the technology archives, it was welcomed back with open arms. Although the exact definition has changed from it's 3Dfx roots, it boils down to two graphics cards working on the same job. The obvious benefit is that two cards should be able to easily outperform even the fastest single...
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ATI has been on tear the past few months, releasing a number of new and interesting products. Since late September / early October of this year, we've been presented with Radeon X850 CrossFire and requisite CrossFire capable dual-PEG slot motherboards to go along with it, a whole series of products based on the new X1K family of GPUs, and...
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Although they were once a dominant market leader, S3 is now a company that almost exclusively focuses on the budget / business-class graphics market. For years, S3 has been marketing budget / business-class video cards, managing to offer competitive solutions in a segment that is dominated by "the big boys" - ATI and NVIDIA. ...
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An unfortunate side effect of many of today's high-performing PC peripherals is significant heat output. The need to tame this heat has led to bigger, and unfortunately, louder cooling solutions, which is something we at HotHardware are very familiar with. With the number of fans we have in some of our test systems, you'd think we were trying...
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The big headlines in today's video card related articles almost always come down to seeing double; whether it's two NVIDIA GeForce cards connected in SLI or two ATi Radeons running in CrossFire mode. Perhaps it's justified in that people always want to see higher framerates and increased performance, regardless of the cost. ...
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With the adoption of PCI Express as a next-gen I/O technology, all of the major chipset manufacturers worked hard to bring compatible chipsets to market. Naturally, Intel was first on the scene with the 900 series chipsets. But on the AMD side, VIA was first to market with its K8T890 Chipset. Building on the successes of...
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It has only been about six weeks since ATI officially unveiled their new Radeon X1K family of products, but the Canadian based graphics giant is already introducing a new addition to the line-up today. It probably comes as no surprise to many of you that, in parrallel with their X1K family of products launch, engineers at ATI were also hard...
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If we took a moment to reflect on some of the biggest technological advancements in recent history, SLI has to be on the short list. Thanks in part to the increased bandwidth of PCI Express, NVIDIA paved the way for running two matching PCI Express based video cards concurrently, resulting in what we know today as SLI. As with...
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End user demand for increased hard drive capacity is waning somewhat, now that we can store over 200,000 typical digital photos, or 60,000 music files, for less than a $100 street price. Sixty thousand music files could play for almost six months without repeating and you'd have to stay awake for almost 70 days straight if you look...
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The launch of ATI's Radeon X1K family of graphics cards last month served multiple purposes. First, it allowed ATI to showcase their next-generation graphics hardware, well before the start of the holiday buying season. Something ATI needed to do after suffering from multiple delays. But it also served another purpose, one that wasn't quite...
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Around this time last month, ATI made a lot of noise with the launch of their new X1000 series of graphics cards. With much of the buzz still continuing a month later, it's little surprise that NVIDIA is feeling the need to showcase something new. With their 7800 boards covering the enthusiast market, and the new 6800 GS tackling the mainstream,...
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The mainstream video card market is about to get a shot in the arm courtesy of the folks at NVIDIA. Today the company is officially unveiling a new addition to their popular GeForce 6 Series of products, the GeForce 6800 GS. The GeForce 6800 GS is a new 12-pipeline, mainstream product, that promises relatively high-performance at a much more...
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The Radeon X800 XL has been a very successful GPU for ATI. The X800 XL has been widely available for quite some time, it's built using a .11 micron process that make it a cost effective part for ATI to produce, and retail cards based on the X800 XL GPU offer very good performance for the price. 256MB variants of the X800 XL have also been...
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Over the years, ATI's All-In-Wonder series of video cards have been the card of choice for those looking for a complete 3D Graphics card/TV-Tuner hybrid. With little competition and a consistent release schedule of new models, ATI sits atop the all-in-one food chain, with the most popular option available. We shouldn't ignore the fact...
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When someone talks about ways to enhance your gaming experience, we typically focus on faster graphics cards and high resolution monitors. Over the years, this has typically been the only way to dramatically enhance the way games were played. However, with the launch of Doom3 roughly a year ago, the gaming world soon realized that there was...
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Over the last couple of years, we've evaluated quite a number of socket 939 motherboards for AMD Athlon 64 processors. The vast majority of these motherboards were based on NVIDIA's very popular nForce 3/4 chipsets, although a smattering were based on chipsets from SiS or VIA as well. In November of last year though, ATI also chimed in with...
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We certainly do evaluate and showcase our fair share of ASUS products here at HotHardware, and it's no great mystery because Asus is also typically one of the first out of the block with a new chipset technology. The company's new A8N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard is no exception. NVIDIA's new nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset has been out the...
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Asus recently presented us with an opportunity to evaluate a rather unique video card, namely their soon to be released Extreme N7800 GT DUAL. What makes the Asus Extreme N7800 GT Dual somewhat unique is that this card sports a pair of NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT GPUs and 512MB of GDDR3 RAM on a single PCB. The Extreme N7800 GT Dual...
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Foxconn manufactures a wide range of products, ranging from video cards, to connectors, and as we'll explore today, motherboards. Over the years, we've had some experience with Foxconn, and while their products have not always been hardcore-enthusiast friendly, they have produced decent products. Today we'll be sampling Foxconn's WinFast NF4SK8AA-8EKRS,...
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Thermaltake is a company that offers a wide variety of products for custom computer builders. Whether you are looking for specialized cooling solutions, such as an active hard drive cooler, a water cooling kit or a quality CPU cooler like the Golden Orb II we recently reviewed, Thermaltake has an answer. Top that off with Multifunction...
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This past year has been a tumultuous one for ATI. The Canadian graphics giant has been plagued by well-documented supply problems and have had to deal with multiple delays to their next-gen product, being developed under the code name "R520". The situation is reminiscent of NVIDIA's prior to the launch of the NV30 which later became...
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In the past, notebooks and gaming were two mutually exclusive things. Granted, you could get away with some Solitaire or Pinball though that was just about the extent of any gaming for mobile users. Over the course of the last few years, we've witnessed the notebook industry go through some dramatic changes. Gaming-specific notebooks were...
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